FACTORS AFFECTING THE VALUE OF MOLDED PRODUCTS FROM YELLOW-POPLAR LUMBER

The increasing interest in using yellow-poplar lumber for moulding and millwork has brought about the need to know how the final product val ue is affected by various material and processing variables such as sa wing pattern, drying regime, log size, log grade, and lumber grade. To quantify the effect of these variables, 227 yellow-poplar logs were s awn into 18,237 board feet (BF) of 4/4 lumber. Approximately one half of the logs were grade-sawn and the remainder were live-sawn. Approxim ately one half of the lumber from each sawing pattern was dried in a d ehumidification kiln (DH) and the remainder in a conventional steam ki ln. After drying, the lumber was ripped into moulding strips, which we re machined on a 5-headed moulder. The moulded strips were assigned a product value and were summed by board. The board data were summed by log. The log value was converted to $/thousand BF by dividing total pr oduct value by the BF of lumber recovered and multiplying by 1,000. St atistical analyses indicated that grade-sawn logs had a higher moulded product value than live-sawn logs. Lumber dried in a DH kiln had a hi gher moulded product value than lumber dried in a steam kiln. Higher g rade logs had a higher product value and larger logs tended to result in higher product value. The data also showed that converting rough, g reen lumber into moulded products resulted in value added ranging from over 200 percent for FAS lumber to over 500 percent for No. 3 Common lumber.